Lisa Raitt makes the case for a female party leader

Conservative leadership candidate Lisa Raitt makes a lot of really strong arguments for choosing a woman as the next leader of the Tories, but they all boil down to one core idea: In the minds of too many voters, the Conservative Party of Canada is the party of old white men — and it’s hurting its political prospects.

“I think a woman is best placed to do it because it’s such a different face than what people assume with the Conservative Party of Canada. We’re not a bunch of old white guys,” she said during a recent interview at Mamma Teresa’s in Ottawa.

“Who can beat (Trudeau)? Who’s going to look the best up there? Who doesn’t have to explain that they’re compassionate? Who doesn’t have to make extra efforts to connect with women? Cause I can and I do.”

She says even when the party ran principled male conservatives with compassionate ideas in the past, it has lost four and a half times out of five.

More than any other candidate vying for the leadership, Raitt leans heavily on her personal story to connect her with grassroots party members. Raised by her grandparents in Whitney Pier, Cape Breton, she only learned who her mother was when she was 12. Before her grandparents took over her care, she lived in a foster home for a year.

Given the time, Raitt’s young Catholic mother was not permitted to marry her father, who was Anglican, so she gave up custody of her child. Later, Raitt learned that had her mom been given an opportunity, she might have terminated the pregnancy. It’s why Raitt tilts anti-abortion, but says she would never support government legislation limiting access to the procedure.

Raitt is the only mom in the race; she has two boys, aged 12 and 15. That, coupled with the fact that she rose from very modest beginnings in rural Cape Breton to succeed in law, business and government, as well as the easy charm and optimism she brings to personal encounters on the campaign trail, makes her stand out in the crowded CPC leadership field.

That ability to connect will be vital in the next election, she says, given Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s mastery of retail politics. In the last election, the Conservatives managed to alienate women, the Atlantic provinces, millennials (although she acknowledges the party never really had millennials) and senior citizens.

She says Trudeau is a “unicorn” — a unique candidate whose image stands in stark contrast to those of other career politicians — and the Tories have to treat him like one.

“If you want to keep doing things the same way, you’re doomed to repeat (defeat), so that’s why I think we need a unique contender.”

To that end, although she’s chosen to take a different approach than her opponent, Kevin O’Leary, she praises him for having that quality.

“He’s a unique contender” Raitt says. “He’s definitely different than Trudeau. You’re going to see contrast up there right away.”

In January, she held a press conference at the National Press Theatre in Ottawa to launch a website: StopKevinOLeary.com. At the time, Raitt called the Shark Tank personality a TV entertainer with no filter and said O’Leary (and Kellie Leitch) are both taking lessons from what we saw in the U.S. election – embracing a style of “negative” and “irresponsible populism”.

That aside, Raitt says his strength is that people know him.

She says Conservative members, those who are not yet members and who are disappointed with Trudeau, look at O’Leary and say, “He’s an excellent communicator, he’s got lots of experience, none of it in House of Commons, but that’s not a bad thing for them.”

People want their picture taken with him and they listen to him. He was applauded at a recent Burlington event and he’s surrounded by decent people and Raitt says that’s important to her.

And while she can recognize his strengths, she also sees his weaknesses and has talked about them publicly.

Raitt still doesn’t think he’s a good fit for the party, but if the membership chooses him, the membership chooses him.

“I’m going to give it a good shot at making sure it’s not him, so I’m not stepping back,” she says. “But I’m a pragmatist. I’m a realist when it comes to this stuff. And I don’t know if he’s going to win, it’s not a slam dunk.”

There are still 14 candidates in the race and all but two – Raitt and Leitch – are men. Raitt has mused openly about whether seven candidates should consider dropping out. Aside from O’Leary, she says even members of the party are getting candidates confused.

“Don’t assume that we’re all well-known household faces and names. I can’t tell you how may times people call me Kellie. I don’t look like her at all, we’re extreme opposites. We’re both from Ontario and we’re both women – the similarities stop there. But yet, I get the name Kellie because I’m a woman in the race,” she says.

Raitt says they also lost the last election on the party’s rejection of legalizing marijuana and she says the party would lose an election on recriminalization. She’d propose raising the legal age limit to 25.

Raitt’s husband Bruce Wood was diagnosed with early on-set Alzheimer’s last May. They married in September. She said he always wanted to get married, but she would tell him, “I’m a cabinet minister, or I’m in an election, it’s really time consuming to plan a wedding.”

But if he wanted to help plan, sure. What Raitt says she didn’t realize is that for the last three years he didn’t have the ability to help her plan a wedding. Wood, now 57, has had Alzheimer’s for that long, according to the doctor’s analysis. “And I didn’t notice,” she says.

“He was a CEO, so literally when he’d ask me to do stuff, or tell me to do stuff, I’d say to him ‘I’m not your EA, dude.'”

She thought it was arrogance but in reality, he just didn’t know how to do it.

Wood’s employer, however, had noticed his performance was suffering. When Raitt could see that he was struggling for words, they visited his family physician, who referred him to a specialist. She thought he might be experiencing heart problems. But when she received the direction to accompany him to his appointment, she Googled the doctor and learned that he specialized in Alzheimer’s.

“The doctor pulled me aside and he says, ‘So your husband has Alzheimer’s.’ I thought the ground just fell away from my feet.”

The doctor felt Wood was in a pretty fragile state and wondered about telling him.

“I said ‘absolutely not. We’re getting a second opinion.’ So he didn’t know that we had this original opinion in March,” Raitt says, adding that she hasn’t told anyone this before, but she spent the next days and weeks researching and found a physician in Toronto who agreed to see him.

Initially, Wood wouldn’t go because he knew how poorly he did on the first cognitive test, but eventually conceded. They met with that physician the day before leaving for the party’s Vancouver policy conference (where Raitt had a suite set because she was gearing up for her leadership run), who confirmed the diagnosis.

“Bruce just took it because he likes this doctor and said okay, ‘well how do I fix it, I want to fix it.’ I don’t know if Bruce knows that he can’t fix it,” she says.

“I got over the tears a long time ago. I mean the shock of it, to be told … But we never talk about the future because we don’t know what it holds.”

Getting married last fall in the wake of Wood’s diagnosis was important because she wanted him to know that they were “in this together.” One good thing about losing government is that she was able to organize their wedding. And now make a run at the leadership.

“I love the guy. I’m far more mindful of the importance of every day we have. We’ve made the decision to run because there will be no other time to do this,” Raitt says, adding that she’s 48 and the winner will be leader for 8-12 years. “So this is the moment in time.”